Saturday, December 23, 2006

Venezuela's state oil company said yesterday that it will buy four oil tankers from Iran, expanding its fleet with the help of a nation closely allied with President Hugo Chavez.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA said in a statement that its shipping subsidiary, PDV Marina, had signed a contract to buy the tankers from the Iran Marine Industrial Company. It did not disclose the price.PDV Marina president Asdrubal Chavez, who is a cousin of the president, said the deal is among various projects involving the two governments, and is also part of Venezuela's larger plan to expand PDV Marina's current fleet of 21 oil tankers.

... The leftist president also has sought particularly close ties with Iran since he took office in 1999.

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE THE FACT THAT HUGO'S FREAKIN' COUSIN RUNS THE COUNTRY'S SHIPPING COMPANY! AND THERE'S MORE, (AFP):

Venezuela's state oil giant PDVSA has formed a joint venture with Iranian-owned Sadra America Latina to support offshore oil exploration and development, PDVSA said Friday.

The new company, Venezirian, will offer engineering, construction and repair services for offshore platforms, PDVSA said in a statement. At first it will involve building offshore structures in Iran and assembling them in Venezuela, but eventually it will involve building them in Venezuela.

A Keralite, who was reportedly facing death sentence in Saudi Arabia, has been set free due to timely intervention of Indian authorities.

Jojo Joseph of Edathua in the district was on Monday ordered to be beheaded for entering the holy place of Medina despite a bar on non-Muslims.

Well I certainly agree that's an example of timely intervention!

According to Jojo's family members in Edathua, the Saudi authorities later took a lenient view of the case after they were convinced that he did not deliberately commit the mistake.

Jojo, employed in an electronic shop in Jeddah, ran into trouble while rushing in a cab to a hospital where his wife had given birth to a child. The taxi driver took a wrong route and strayed into the prohibited area, his family members said.The Indian was then spotted by religious volunteers, who handed him to police.

Whoa! The cab driver makes a wrong turn, and if you don't happen to be a Muslim, you get beheaded!

Jojo's brother-in-law sought former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's help in the matter. Chandy contacted the Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi and Minister of state for External Affairs E Ahmed. The two ministers acted swiftly and secured the release of Jojo through the intervention of Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Egyptian health authorities reported that two more people were infected with the bird flu virus (H5N1). The two apparently contracted the disease after coming in contact with infected ducks. The number of infected Egyptians has now reached 17; seven of them have died from the disease.

Egypt -- the Arab world's most populous state -- is on a major route for migratory birds and has seen the third highest number of H5N1 cases after Indonesia and China according to Dr David Nabarro, the UN official charged with battling bird flu.The H5N1 strain of bird flu was first diagnosed in birds in Egypt in February, and the first case in humans was announced on March 18.

AND JUST BEFORE HAJJ - WHEN MILLIONS OF MUSLIMS, AND MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF EGYPTIANS - GO TO MECCA, AND SPREAD DISEASES. Were Bird Flu to be H2H now, it would spread like wildfire through the Muslim world.

The Channel tunnel has been targeted by a group of Islamic militant terrorists aiming to cause maximum carnage during the holiday season, according to French and American secret services.

The plan, which the French DGSE foreign intelligence service became aware of earlier this year, is revealed in a secret report to the French government on threat levels. The report, dated December 19, indicates that the tip-off came from the American CIA.

THIS MIGHT BE ONE OF THE MAJOR IMPENDING ATTACKS LONDON FEARED. MAYBE IT HAS BEEN THWARTED... or maybe only delayed or diverted to a different target. More HERE. Excerpt:

According to the French sources, the plan was put together in Pakistan and is being directed from there. The plotters are believed to be Western Europeans, possibly Britons of Pakistani descent. ... A successful attack on such an installation would be almost as spectacular as September 11', said one terrorist expert. ... Last week news reports in America detailed a squad of a dozen English-speaking militants, nine of whom are said to be British who, having sought out the al-Qaeda bases, have now been trained to a high level in terrorist tactics. The group is known as the English Brothers because of their shared language. Apart from the nine Britons, the squad is made up of an Australian and two Norwegians. It was reported that Bin Laden and other militant leaders hope they will lead a new wave of terror attacks on the continent.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, recently disclosed that UK intelligence services are monitoring more than 200 networks and 1,600 individuals in Britain. She said that her investigators had identified nearly 30 plots 'that often have links back to al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links al-Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here'.

These jihadomaniacs - and NOT global-warming, and NOT free trade, and NOT globalization, and NOT trade deficits, and NOT marriage discrimination against gays - are the greatest threats to the West.

UPDATE: If you check the time-stamps of all the other blogs which posted on this you'll find out that TAB was first - AGAIN! Proving once again that TAB is the place to be.

President Vladimir Putin will retain a leadership role in Russia even if he steps down in 2008, as required by the constitution, a senior politician has said. "He will not leave," Sergei Stepashin, head of Russia's accounting chamber, was quoted as saying in the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily Saturday. "I think he will find the kind of formula in which he would step down, but stay on."Stepashin, a former prime minister, secret services chief and KGB veteran, suggested that Putin's post-Kremlin future could be modelled loosely on that of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who in the 1990s was widely considered to retain backroom power despite his retirement.

Asked what sort of options Putin might consider, Stepashin answered: "Lots. Party leader, head of parliament, government, a new state council." Putin has repeatedly vowed to respect the constitution and leave office at the end of his second four-year term in 2008. However, he has also said that he hopes to retain influence.

According to Stepashin, Putin's departure would be a blow. "He is right and not right. There is a dilemma. From the political view, he should stay. Not only because the work is all going well. Any new leader brings a new team. At a minimum, this causes a break in momentum."Putin, another KGB veteran whom critics accuse of rolling back democracy and crushing independent media, became president in 2000. Polls show that he is hugely popular in Russia.

Putin on his mission in life — “My historical mission,” he insisted, is to stop “the collapse of the USSR” (p. 139). To do this, he vowed to “consolidate the armed forces, the Interior Ministry, and the FSB [the successor to the KGB, the “secret police” of the Soviet Union]” (p. 140). “If I can help save Russia from collapse, then I’ll have something to be proud of” (p. 204).On his rise from spy to president — “In the Kremlin, I have a different position. Nobody controls me here. I control everybody else” (p. 131).On the czars — “[F]rom the very beginning, Russia was created as a supercentralized state. That’s practically laid down in its genetic code, its traditions, and the mentality of its people,” said Putin, adding: “In certain periods of time . . . in a certain place . . . under certain conditions . . . monarchy has played and continues to this day to play a positive role. . . . The monarch doesn’t have to worry about whether or not he will be elected, or about petty political interests, or about how to influence the electorate. He can think about the destiny of the people and not become distracted with trivialities” (p. 186).

It will be remembered that the 1967 Six-Day War broke out after Egypt closed the straits of Tiran and strangled the trade from Israel's southern port city of Eliat. Yet few are aware that Egypt has staked a claim to the city of Eilat, ever since it lost Eilat to the nascent state of Israel in the wake of the Egyptian army's defeat in the 1948 war, followed by the expulsion of the Egyptians from this southern port city on the Red Sea.

Now, in the wake of recent reports about plans to dig a canal linking the Red Sea on the Israeli side and the Dead Sea on its Jordanian side, a fiery argument broke out in Egypts parliament, with the members of parliament (MPs) speaking out against the "Israeli plot to choke the Suez Canal to death."

In the course of the debate, which has been going on in parliament for the last two days, Abed el-Aziz Sayef a-Nasser, an aide to the Egyptian foreign minister, was called as an expert witness. A-Nasser is the director of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's legal department. "Eilat, or by its former name Umm Rashrash, belongs to the Palestinians," he said, representing the opinion of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. [...]

Significantly, in the debate among the Egyptian MPs, the experts and the Foreign Ministry officials, no mention is made of possible legitimate Israeli sovereignty of Eilat. The debate in Cairo is between two camps: the Egyptian Foreign Ministry which claims that Eilat belongs to the Palestinians, and the opposition MPs who claim that Eilat belongs to Egypt.

It belongs to neither, and lest we forget that "palestinians" didn't exist until recently, as early as the late 1960s. I think this pretty much shows that Egypt is slowly on its way to returning to its hostile ways again, more clearly than in past years.

A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said.

Osmani was the Taliban's chief military commander in southern Afghanistan and played a ''central role in facilitating terrorist operations'' including roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings, the U.S. said. He was part of a group of ''co-equals'' at the top of the Taliban leadership chain just under Omar, U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins said. ''This guy had been deeply involved in terrorist acts against the people of Afghanistan, NATO and the government,'' Collins said. ''He was a top commander of Taliban operations in the south and now he's no more.'' ...

... Collins said that Osmani had been ''utilizing both sides'' of the Afghan-Pakistan border, and that the U.S. military had been tracking him ''for a while.''

''When the time was right, and we thought we had a good chance of hitting him without causing any harm to civilians, we struck,'' he said.

I'm glad we got him! Congratz to the Coalition and our Troops! (I bet we used a drone!)

I highlighted the last part because it pisses me off: The fact that we need to pay so much dang attention to the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that we need to worry so much about collateral damage. These things didn't bother FDR or Truman, and it's one reason they kept winning most of the battles on the way to winning the war. Sure sure sure: times have changed. But the now common expectation - that war is no longer hell - is not fair. Our extraordinarily technologically advanced smart bombs and drones (operated by remote control, sometimes from thousands of miles away) have made people think that wars must be fought and won without suffering casualties or killing civilians. This has greatly hindered our effort and prolonged the war, and this leads to more US casualties.

We should fully commit to winning and then pull out all the stops. We must stop fighting with one hand behind our back. Fighting this way will shorten the war and be a better deterrent against future would-be foes. (More HERE and HERE.)

Deputy Syrian P. M. Abdallah Dardari said in an interview with the Financial Times that the international isolation on Syria has ended and that western countries have reached the conclusion that they should cooperate with Damascus. "There is a sense that people are realizing in western capitals that if you want to be influential in the Middle East, you have to come through Damascus," Dardari said.

The Leftie Dems have played right into Assad's - and by extension, Iran's - hands. Knowingly or not, this is traitorous while we are at war and as Iran and Syria aid the forces which attack our troops and the troops and citizens of our allies.

(I WONDER IF IT WAS KERRY, OR ONE OF THESE OTHER LEFTIE SENATORS, WHO MET WITH HAMAS? WILL WE EVER FIND OUT? WILL THE MSM EVER EVEN TRY TO FIND OUT?? Perhaps the AP would like to assign Jamil Hussein to investigate!)

(THEN AGAIN: To change the Middle East for the better, I think we probably do have to go through Damascus... with bullets. bombs and bayonets! As others have suggested, we can bring our troops in Iraq home via Damascus! And after we force regime change there, who cares if it sets of more fratricide - with one branch of Syrain islamoterrorists killing another brach!? I don't have a dog in that fight! I hope both sides lose! Maybe this is the plan?***UPDATE: I just added the Assad-Ahmadinejad photo (above), and noticed that in this photo, the two islamothugs look like they're the same height.

But Assad is a very tall man and Ahmadinejad is a shrimp - as we all know and as this photo shows.

So... either the photo has been photo-shopped by the Iranian government (to make Ahmadinejad look taler and Assad shorter), or... perhaps the vain Ahmadinejad has the photo-op room specially rigged like an "AMES ROOM" to make him look as tall as his guests!

Here's a photo of the simple method Ahmadinejad uses to make himself look like a man of normal height when STANDING with his normal-sized guests! And it proves that appearing to be a regular-sized man is important to Ahmadinejad.

Perhaps we'll find out how Ahmadinejad does it when he's SEATED after Senator Kerry and the other traitorous Democrats return from Tehran! Maybe he just sits on a few telephone books!

The Archbishop of Canterbury has accused the government of placing Christians in the Middle East at risk through its actions in Iraq. Dr Rowan Williams told the Times ministers had ignored warnings Christians in the region "would be seen as supporters of the crusading West".

Among the results was the shrinking Christian population in Iraq, he said. Dr Williams, leader of the Anglican church, is on a pilgrimage to the region with other UK church leaders.

PILGRIMMAGE! HAH! IT SOUNDS MORE LIKE HE WENT THERE TO PAY HOMAGE TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN TERRORIZING CHRISTIANS - AND JEWS - IN THE REGION FOR NEARLY 1500 YEARS! And neither the USA or the UK have been in Iraq for 1500 years. That's why blaming jihadoterror on "crusaders" is like blaming the wife when her husband beats her.

(I should also like to remind the Archbishop that the Crusades were defensive wars waged by the West to RETAKE the Holy Lands - lands which Islam had STOLEN from the West. And remember, Rowan: A thief NEVER has a rightful claim on stolen goods - no matter how much time has passed.)

Ocean sediment reveals the pattern behind the rise and fall of ice ages and the shape of Earth's orbit. ...

Limiting their analysis to the Oligocene--a glacial time period that lasted between roughly 34 million and 23 million years ago--the researchers found that global climate responds to slight changes in the amount of sunlight hitting Earth during shifts in its orbit between elliptical and circular.

"Of all the records so far, this is both the longest and, also, the clearest that most of the climatic variations between glacial and interglacial at that time [were] most likely related to orbital cycles," Pälike says.

... the researchers found that patterns of glaciation and ice retreat followed the eccentricity of our planet's orbitthey report in the December 22 Science.

Saddam killed many. Now Hamas and Fatah are killing each other in DROVES. And Iraqi Shias and Iraqi Sunnis are committing "mutual genocide" (Tm).

So, er... um.... why don't as**oles like Carter and Baker and Annan demand that these other Muslim-on-Muslim wars end!? If they were REAL humanists, then they would. And they would also demand an end to the Muslim on Hindi violence in Kashmir, and the Muslim on Buddhist violence in Thailand.But they don't. Because they are not real humanists. They're just anti-Semites, and anti-Americans who'd rather appease jihadists them fight them.

NOTE: The photo is of the bombed-out Golden Mosque. This mosque - the holiest one for Shias - was destroyed by Sunnis, NOT JOOOOZE. So why don't Dhimmi Carter and James Baker and Kofi Annan demand that of these Iraqi Muslim groups stop the violence?! Why don't they volunteer to negotiate a settlement between these two Muslim groups!?

The Algerian Civil War was an armed conflict between the Algerian government and various Islamist rebel groups which began in 1991. It is estimated to have cost between 150,000 and 200,000 lives.

And I don't remember Dhimmi Carter or Kofi Annan saying jacks*it about this - even tho' the death toll in Algeria is one hundred times worse than the death toll between Arabs and Israelis. WHY WERE THEY SILENT ABKOUT THE ALGERIAN GENOCIDE, AND WHY ARE THEY SO DANG FIXATED ON ISRAELI-ARAB STRIFE - AND WHY DO THEY INSIST THAT THE ARAB-ISREALI VIOLENCE IS ISRAEL'S FAULT!?

Anti-Semitism. If they really wanted to save Muslims from violence then they would have to go after other Muslims.

The ACLU is turning to the courts in a bid to overturn the Michigan constitution. The Michigan constitution now says: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting" but the ACLU figures that the courts can overturn that. The courts have long ignored the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution so the ACLU may be right. The USA has a lawless judiciary at the highest level

Filing a lawsuit today on behalf of 19 students, faculty and applicants to the University of Michigan, a coalition of civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, are asking a federal court to declare that the newly passed Proposal 2 has not changed the Supreme Court’s view, stated as recently as 2003, that it is constitutionally permissible for universities to consider race and gender as one factor among many in university admissions. "We are pleased to be able to represent current students and faculty, as well as prospective students, in a case that will be the first to evaluate exactly what Proposal 2 means in this state," said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. "The recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court made clear that it is entirely within the law for universities to consider race or gender as one of many criteria in selecting their student body. Proposal 2 should not change that."

It has been reported that Al Qaeda in Iraq has offered a truce to the US in Iraq, if they abandon their heavy weapons in the field and leave within30 days. Obviously they know this will not be accepted(Dhimmy Carter is no longer President you know) ...but it will justify the attacks soon to come from the enemy.

I have a good friend who is an Armenian Christian. He looks like an Arab, and he owns a gas station.

His family fled Armenia during the Armenian genocide, and they escaped to Iran. His family became wealthy in Iran.

In 1979, his family fled Iran (without their money) to excape the Islamic Revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini. My friend and his family they wound up here in the U.S., and in Paris.

Their family has, for the most part, become wealthy again. However, recently, the family has been having to pool money to get their relatives our of Paris, because of the Muslims.

So, you see the pattern here. They have had to flee Islamic Jihad three times in the past 100 years.

I'm telling you, my Armenian friend and his family are some of the kindest and gentlest people I know. They are great Americans And yet, the BNP, and parties like it, would consider these people enemies.

Additionally, I would like to say that I sympathize with the desire of many British people to keep England ethnically British. I am an American, but my family hails from Britain, and they all live there to this day. I understand the value of the Anglo-Saxon ethos, and its history.

However, I also want to say that personally, I, as a white person, am a minority within my own family (most of my family are, in fact, first-generation immigrants). On Thanksgiving, for instance, we had 25 people over to our house, and only four of us were white.

I love my family, and they are as American, if not more so, than myself. America has performed the historical miracle of transforming the ethnic and cultural strengths of Europe into an ideology which can be planted in the hearts of human beings from all over the planet.

The BNP would prefer to take things back to the days before the miracle of Americanism was born. I believe we can move forward into a better future.

Commenters to my previous posting objected to the characterization of Dhimmi Carter as an anti-Semite.

They did not object to the characterization of Dhimmi Carter as the paid agent of extremist Arab Islamist terrorists and jihadis.

Perhaps I should be content with that. . .

However, there is evidence that in addition to committing himself to providing aid, comfort, and support to terrorists who have openly avowed their genocidal aim of killing all the Jews in Israel, and ultimately the world, Carter is a Jew-hater himself. Let's look at the record:

Reg Murphy, who as editor of the Atlanta Constitution had kept a close eye on Carter’s rise in state politics, declared, “Jimmy Carter is one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met.”

Speechwriter Bob Shrum quit the Carter campaign after just a few weeks, disgusted with what he described as Carter’s penchant for fudging the truth. He also related that Carter, convinced the Jewish vote in the Democratic primaries would go to Senator Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, had instructed his staff not to issue any more statements on the Middle East.

“Jackson has all the Jews anyway,” Shrum quoted Carter as saying. “We get the Christians.” Relations between Carter and Israel were tense from the outset of the Carter presidency. Carter’s hostility was evident to Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan, who in his memoir Breakthrough described a July 1977 White House meeting between Carter and Israeli officials. “You are more stubborn than the Arabs, and you put obstacles on the path to peace,’’ an angry Carter scolded Dayan and his colleagues. “Our talk,” Dayan wrote, “lasted more than an hour and was most unpleasant. President Carter...launched charge after charge against Israel.”

Oh, you say, he's only anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic? Well how about this:

In Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn revealed that during a March 1980 meeting with his senior political advisers, Carter, discussing his fading reelection prospects and his sinking approval rating in the Jewish community, snapped, “If I get back in, I’m going to [expletive] the Jews.”

Carter calls the Hamas leaders men of peace, a claim that flies in the face of every known reality. He wants Israel to back down unilaterally, to believe the promises of people who are its sworn enemy. Israel withdrew from Gaza just last year, removing Jewish settlers by force. The result was relentless rocket attacks and the killing and kidnapping of Jewish soldiers within Israel.

I have read with shock and sadness Carter's biased, harmful book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." I have watched as Carter was interviewed in the media. He told CNN's Larry King that President Bill Clinton and envoy Dennis Ross were misrepresenting their peace efforts in 2000, insisting that only he knew the truth, even though they were there and he was not.

When Soledad O'Brien of CNN, showing deep concern about the severe criticisms directed against the book, asked him how he would respond, he laughed. He has not once answered the many specific criticisms except to say, again and again, that his book is completely accurate.

He has said or hinted repeatedly that Jews control the Congress and the media, a classic anti-Semitic slur. It seems that Cuban-Americans can speak up on Cuba, Irish-Americans can support the IRA, Mexican-Americans can lobby on immigration law, but when Jewish-Americans speak our minds about Israel, we don't deserve the same constitutional protections and a former president can try to silence us.

Carter won the governorship of Georgia in 1970 via a race-baiting campaign.

In his 2004 book The Real Jimmy Carter, Steven Hayward writes that Carter's campaign staff sent an anonymous mailer "to barbershops, country churches, and rural law enforcement officers containing a grainy photo of [his Democratic opponent Carl] Sanders, part owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, at an after-game locker room victory celebration. Two black players were pouring champagne over Sanders's head. The Atlanta Constitution noted, 'In the context of the sports pages, it was a routine shot ... But in the context of this political campaign it was a dangerous smear that injected both race, alcohol, and high living into the campaign.'

Carter's senior campaign aides Bill Pope, Hamilton Jordan, and Jerry Rafshoon were behind the mailing; Pope was even spotted passing out the flyers at a Ku Klux Klan rally ... The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Shortly before his death, Dr. King had the moral courage to confront the burgeoning Jew hatred of both extreme leftwing Black organizations, including the Black Panthers and the radicalized Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, as well as the Black Muslims. For example, during a 1968 appearance at Harvard University, he stated bluntly:

"When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, You are talking anti-Semitism." [ from "The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and Israel" by Seymour Martin Lipset; in Encounter magazine, December 1969, p. 24. ].

Dhimmi Carter is a Jew-hater, a genocide-enabler, a liar, and a crook. He should be required to register as an active and willing collaborator with the terroristic jihad of his friends in Hamas, Fatah, and Saudi Arabia.

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Prosecutors dropped rape charges Friday against three Duke University lacrosse players accused of attacking a stripper at a team party, a defense attorney said. Joseph Cheshire, an attorney for one of the three players, said charges of kidnapping and sexual offense remain in place. District Attorney Mike Nifong did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

What I really want to know is when Mike Nifong is going to be brought up on charges himself.

It's getting as politically intolerant as Germany. The BNP is an anti-immigration party.

"The Sugar Plum Fairy in English National Ballet's production of The Nutcracker had to confront angry colleagues before yesterday's matinee performance after she was revealed to be a member of the British National Party.

Clarke said she believed that immigration had "really got out of hand". She added: "If everyone who thinks like I do joined, it would really make a difference."

Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance. At that time, Mr. Lance's mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank "which would bribe God," came to Mr. Lance's rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: "we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president." Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance's $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.

And that was only the beginning.

When Mr. Lance introduced Mr. Carter to Abedi, the latter gave $500,000 to help the former president establish his center at Emory University. Later, Abedi contributed more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects. Even after BCCI was indicted — and convicted -— for drug money laundering, Mr. Carter accepted $1.5 million from Abedi, his "good friend." A quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors. But it was BCCI that helped Mr. Carter established his center. BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and "the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists." Shortly after assuming office, in March 1977, Mr. Carter made his first public statement regarding a Palestinian "homeland." Since then, he has devoted much of his time to denouncing Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism, which he claims is not only "abominable oppression and persecution" of the Palestinians, but also damages U.S. interests in the region.

They report - like the BBC - "Both factions withdrew their troops from Gaza's streets on Wednesday morning, on the first full day of a formal ceasefire."

But there are also reports of continuing gun-battles throughout Gaza.

I guess that these gun-battles don't violate the cease-fire because the truce was only for FORMAL gun-battles between "troops"; now the gun-battles are INFORMAL ones, between "clan members" and Fatah or Hamas "members."

This is truly a distinction without a difference. The fact is, the brutal genocidal thugs of Gaza are STILL killing each other. Who cares HOW they organize themselves - parties, armies, clans?! And who cares how many die?! I don't have a dog in this fight. I hope both sides lose.

Ths BBC article linked to above notes that a few hundred of Gaza's million+ Gazans have staged a rally against the fratricide. I guess these "brave folks" are only happy when Arabs are killing JOOOOOZE.

According to rumors, the IAEA had already identified the source of the polonium as a nuclear reactor from Moscow. On Monday, the deputy director of the Kurtchatov nuclear research institute announced the shutdown of 6 nuclear reactors in the Moscow area.

I am leaning toward the theory which blames Putin. It's the simplest explanation. REVENGE. A RUTHLESS MUDER WITH A RADIO-ACTIVE MESSAGE.

BUT... Litvinenko - the dead Muslim former KGB agent - is directly linked to Zakayev the Chechen rebel refugee living in London, and both are directly and financially linked to Berezovsky - a major foe of Putin's. So... MAYBE... Berezovsky was financing the construction of a nuclear bomb (or several dirty bombs) for the Chechens? Maybe Berezovsky saw it as a way to topple Putin, (and reneter Russia)? Maybe Litvinenko died while making it - (them)?

This theory - the LZB Theory - is the only theory which explains eveything - the cost, the connections, and the frantic Berezovsky post-Litvinenko-death "anti-Putin" PR effort.

BILLIONS and BILLIONS of oil-dollars are at stake in Russia - (Putin just took over Shell and BP's operations in some oil-fields). Maybe Berezovsky wants back in!? And maybe he thought this was his ticket? In this case, then, the bomb would have been intended for use in Russia, or Chechnya.

BUT... MAYBE IT WAS TO BE USED IN ENGLAND!? Maybe this planned attacked was at the center if the recent jihadoterror warning that the UK government has just issued yesterday?

Maybe Litvinenko and Berezovsky got the Polonium from sources they knew and knew they could buy? And maybe this explains the involvement of the other Russians. Maybe they were free-lancing for the money.

ALL I KNOW IS: This is some freakin' mytsery. I hope it doesn't blow up in our faces.

For the dozens of people wounded during this week's battles between president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah and the ruling Hamas movement, that could soon mean a shortage of badly-needed blood.

"Our blood bank is at its lowest level," says Doctor Jumaa Al Saqqa, the hospital spokesman. "People don't want to donate blood the way they used to during Israeli incursions, because they see no reason why. To be spilt in our streets, by Palestinian shooters? No way."

HERE'S HE REAL EXPLANATION: When an Arab is wounded in a battle with Israelis, then the wounded Arab is in their eyes a shahid, period - and in their eyes, a good person to give blood to.

But if the Arab is wounded in a Civil War, then the wounded person might be member of a rival clan, gang or jihadoterrorist organization, and giving hium blood wouldn't be good.

Like the old Arab saying: "Me and my friend against my enemy... me and my cousin against my friend.... me and my brother against my cousin." Well, now in Gaza it seems it's "me against my brother". And I don't have a dog in that fight. I hope BOTH sides lose.

Nidra Poller talks about the blood libel of Charles Enderlin, the Jerusalem correspondent of France2 TV, against Israel and against any critics who dare to speak the truth about his fabrications. She's understandably angry about it.

On a related note, another local blogger in Israel told me he'd met Philippe Karsenty, one of the heads of Media Ratings, a French media watchdog site, at a bloggers conference in Herzliya earlier this week. Karsenty was sued by France2 (a state TV broadcaster), and Enderlin, for charging that the al-Durah case was a hoax, and that Enderlin should be removed. Karsenty lost the suit. He's now appealing the decision.

He said that, if the Israeli government were to either make it clear that the al-Durah footage is faked, or demand that they release the whole recordings taken, then that could help to get to the bottom of this case more easily.

The problem is that, when you have a do-nothing government like Olmert's, then you can't really expect anything of the sort. Until the whole case can dealt with though, here's what I recommend: write to France2's e-mail/letters department. First, go to the main page of their site, then click the javascript link at the top that says "contacter France2". On the page that opens, press one of the two options on the left (vos opinions, or vos autre questions). And what to tell them when you write can be that it doesn't matter whether the court is on Enderlin's side, if France2 doesn't release the extra footage in its entirety, then we don't believe your whole al-Durah tale.

Enderlin may not realize it, but, he's practically getting himself more attention than he may actually want, and the more he keeps on with with his useless charade, the more he's really discrediting and embarrassing himself and France2.

First, President Clinton should secure the nation's borders and in the process help the urban poor for a change -- by sending all those who repeatedly hire illegals to jail.

Second, he should remain resolute in his commitment to welfare reform, but find the means to reduce adult dependency without increasing childhood misery.

Third, he should always remember that Presidents earn the mantle of greatness, not by doing many things competently, or by being politically unsinkable, but by doing one or two great deeds out of moral conviction and by sheer force of will.

Once President Bush was beguiled by this argument he began to sound like a late-blooming schoolboy who had just discovered John Locke, the 17th-century founder of liberalism. In his second inaugural speech, Mr. Bush declared “complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom ... because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.”

Patterson then repeats the oft-heard claim that the more highly pigmented races of man don 't know what it means to be free, and don't necessarily like freedom when they meet it:

Those of us who cherish liberty hold as part of the rhetoric that it is “written in our heart,” an essential part of our humanity. It is among the first civic lessons that we teach our children. But such legitimizing rhetoric should not blind us to the fact that freedom is neither instinctive nor universally desired, and that most of the world’s peoples have found so little need to express it that their indigenous languages did not even have a word for it before Western contact. It is, instead, a distinctive product of Western civilization, crafted through the centuries from its contingent social and political struggles and secular reflections, as well as its religious doctrines and conflicts.

But his biggest mistake is to think that the tyrants of the world, who rule their peoples through the cruelty of democide, can be dislodged without the conflict that even Thomas Jefferson knew would always be required:

Acknowledging the Western social origins of freedom in no way implies that we abandon the effort to make it universal. We do so, however, not at the point of a gun but by persuasion — through diplomacy, intercultural conversation and public reason, encouraged, where necessary, with material incentives. From this can emerge a global regime wherein freedom is embraced as the best norm and practice for private life and government.

The best you can say about this advice is that it is fatuous.

Sure, there have always been many who advocated such "intercultural conversation."

The Copperheads and the Peace Democrats urged it on Abraham Lincoln.

But, if Abraham Lincoln had agreed to respond to the secession of the slave-holding states with mere diplomacy, persuasion, and "intercultural conversation," then slaves across the South would be picking cotton still.

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Like Professor Patterson, the Punditarian hopes that the mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away from the marshes, deserts, and mountains of Iraq.

But enduring that scourge is still preferable to abandoning the Iraqi people to the perpetual violence of tyrants, fanatics, and criminals.

As reported in the Telegraph, the interpreter for Britain's commander in Afghanistan is being charged with spying for Iran. Corporal Daniel James is being charged with spying under the 1911 State Secrets Act. The Act has not been invoked since 1984. Corporal James has been the interpreter for Lt General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. As the Telegraph puts it:

James is of Iranian descent and speaks fluent Pashtun, the main language in Afghanistan, making him invaluable to the Army which is very short of translators. Neighbours at his £800,000 house in Brighton, said his mother speaks only Farsi, the main language of Iran.

In a recent interview for a Forces magazine, James spoke of the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan. "Any verbal contact is better than no contact," he said. "Patrols help civilians see troops in a good light. If you see a strange man with a gun, you automatically think of him as hostile. If he smiles and asks you how you are doing or for directions, you will think differently of him. Nine out of 10 people start treating me as one of their own and actually help me as much as they possibly can with information when I speak their native language."

Well, maybe that's not the onlyreason that enemy personnel treat him as "one of their own."

And with his mother in an £800,000 house, he's hardly reacting to his underprivileged, marginalized status.

The jihadis are unable to bring down Western civilization on their own. They require the services of traitors in order to accomplish their evil designs.

We must beware of those who would, like Ephialtes of Trachis, provide our enemies with the crucial information that will allow them to succeed.

British intelligence and law enforcement officials have passed on a grim assessment to their U.S. counterparts, "It will be a miracle if there isn't a terror attack over the holidays in London," a senior American law enforcement official tells ABCNews.com.

British police have been quietly carrying out a series of key arrests as they continue to track at least six active "plots" tied to what they call "al Qaeda of England."

Even so, ill-chosen or poorly explained policies can do damage—especially if the authorities lose further credibility by being forced to backtrack on them. The aim of the Thai central bank’s new controls was to ease exporters’ discomfort and preserve the country’s attractions to export-oriented industries. But they seem, so far at least, to have created uncertainty and fear, and thus risk undermining investment at a time when the competition from China, India and an also-rising Vietnam, is getting stronger.

Appease the terrorists and screw up the economy -- perhaps the King's confidence in the junta is misplaced, you think? (MORE HERE FROM RELIAPUNDIT-or scroll down.)

Carter's refusal to debate wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that he claims that he wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be thrilled to have the opportunity to debate. Authors should be accountable for their ideas and their facts. Books shouldn't be like chapel, delivered from on high and believed on faith.

What most rankles is Carter's insistence that he is somehow brave for attacking Israel and highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people. No other conflict in the world -- not even the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan -- evokes more hand-wringing in the media, universities, and human rights organizations than the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Jimmy Carter isn't brave for beating up on Israel. He's a bully. And like all school-yard bullies, underneath the tough talk and bravado, there's a nagging insecurity and a fear that one day he'll have to answer for himself in a fair fight.

So how, aside from killing jihadist terrorists, can we defend ourselves against the insidious spread of radical Islam? Here are a few starting suggestions:

Bluntly identify radical Islam as fascistic - without worrying whether some Muslims take offense when we will talk honestly about the extremists in their midst.

At the same time, keep encouraging consensual governments in the Middle East and beyond that could offer people security and prosperity, while distancing ourselves from illegitimate dictators, especially in Syria and Iran, that promote terrorists.

Establish that no more autocracies in the Middle East and Asia will be allowed to get the bomb.

Seek energy independence that would collapse the world price of oil, curbing petrodollar subsidies for terrorists and our own appeasement of their benefactors.

Appreciate the history and traditions of a unique Western civilization to remind the world that we have nothing to apologize for but rather much good to offer to others.

Finally, keep confident in a war in which our will and morale are every bit as important as our overwhelming military strength. The jihadists claim that we are weak spiritually, but our past global ideological enemies - Nazism, fascism, militarism and communism - all failed. And so will they.

The last point is the most important. Keep confident. By any objective standard, despite the ups and downs of daily events and the malign defeatism of the appeasement party, we are winning.

If you pay attention to the financial news then you already know that it has been a good year for Wall Street... and the Danish economy.

This year Wall Street is paying out about $9 BILLION dollars in bonuses to reward their workers. And Denmark is enjoying large surpluses in trade balance and in the public finances. The National Debt, which has plagued Denmark for decades will soon be null - as the Government of Denmark brings home a surplus that will exceed Wall Street's Bonuses.

So when you start to hear heated discussions about the generous bonuses at profit-making companies (as opposed to large payouts to inept executives at money losing firms!) and the balance of payments and public debt just ask yourself "Whose money is it anyway?".

Reliapundit adds: I guess that the Danish gov't should return their surplus to the folks to whom it really belongs: the Danish people! (BTW: The notion of "balance of payments" or balance of trade/trade balance in international trade is bogus. Trade is totally balanced when a buyer exchanges money for the seller's goods. For example: We get goods from China - which we resell at a profit and then enjoy - and China gets money, often an LC. That's an evem-steven trade; it is not imbalanced. We no more have a so-called "trade imbalance" with China then you do with the grocery store.)

"Traditional scenes of pristine snow and ice have given way to rain and muddy grass from Reykjavik to Moscow as unseasonably warm weather puts a damper on festivities. Russians normally revel in the bitter harshness of their winters, but the warmest December since 1879, when records began, has left Muscovites despairing about a lack of snow to see in the new year. Staff at the Yakhroma Park resort, 30 miles north of Moscow, have turned to artificial snow machines to try to open at least one ski run in what should be the peak season. Natalia Silinskaya, the park's commercial director, said that attendance was down 70 per cent on last year. Skiing has been possible on only two weekends so far this winter....

Moscow experienced a record winter high last Friday of 9.3C (48.8F), far above the average of -5C. The city received a light dusting of snow yesterday for the first time this month, but it was not expected to stay on the ground for long. Temperatures are predicted to rise above freezing again before the weekend.

This winter is in stark contrast to last year, when temperatures in the capital plunged to -40C in the coldest winter since 1940. In St Petersburg, where the temperature set a new record of 10.7C last week, organisers of an ice sculpture festival had to create a refrigerated enclosure to prevent the artwork melting. [Umph aded.]

Update 2: A reader writes: "Well, it might be warm in Northern Europe but it's f**king cold here in NorCal. We seem to be experiencing early cold weather with lots of snow predicted for the Sierras and Snow in WA, OR, and even in Vancouver (where we are heading for Christmas).

Self-proclaimed Islamist "moderates" like CAIR and Tariq Ramadan insist that Muslims must benefit from full toleration and complete acceptance in the West.

Why exactly they think that Western cultures must embrace them so openly is not entirely clear, since their own Islamist societies are in fact extremely intolerant. Let's look at a few examples.

As reported today in the Telegraph, a flight attendant working for British Midlands International airways (bmi) was told she could not take her Bible with her on flights to Saudi Arabia.

The stewardess, who has not been named, claims that she has been subject to discrimination because of her faith. She is understood to have deep religious convictions and carries a Bible with her at all times. But bmi, which is the only British scheduled carrier to fly to the country after British Airways pulled out of the route, insisted that it was only following Foreign Office advice.

The dispute has erupted as British Airways seeks to settle its own dispute with Nadia Eweida, a Heathrow check-in worker, who has been banned from wearing a cross on a necklace while on duty.

A spokesman for bmi said the airline was complying with Saudi law and added that the stewardess had been offered the opportunity to switch to working on its short-haul routes. It could not, however, alter its long-haul rosters to accommodate her.

The Foreign Office website informs travellers to Saudi Arabia: "The importation and use of narcotics, alcohol, pork products and religious books, apart from the Koran, and artefacts are forbidden." A spokesman said last night that the Saudi authorities would automatically confiscate a Bible from anybody trying to bring one into the country and it would not be returned. A spokesman for Christian Solidarity Worldwide said: "It is worrying that a British company should be instructing its staff to conform to practices which are in violation of international standards on religious freedom."

The Saudi government prohibits the public practice of other religions and the possession of non-Islamic religious objects has often led to arrests."

The Saudi Government confiscates and shreds Bibles at the entry-points to the Kingdom, and also confiscates and shreds editions of the Holy Qu'ran that do not meet its extremist standards.

That shows the fanatical degree of intolerance practiced by the Saudi Wahhabists, since the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) was known to love cats:

Muezza was the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite cat. The most famous story about Muezza recounts how the call to prayer was given, and as Muhammad went to put on one of his robes, he found his cat sleeping on one of the sleeves, and instead of disturbing the cat he cut off the sleeve and let him sleep. When he returned, Muezza awoke and bowed down to Muhammad, and in return he stroked him three times.

"please do not confuse Islam with the Arab countries. Many majority Islamic countries such as Senegal, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey are experiencing a kind of democracy, even though it is not perfect. This has nothing to do with Islam and very often the religion is used as an instrument to forbid people the right to dissent."

In fact, all Islamic countries are officially intolerant of any other religion. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Ahmadiyya Islamic movement is officially sanctioned, its adherents are not even allowed to call themselves Muslims, and they are forbidden from praying using Muslim forms of worship. They have freedom to practice their form of Islam only in non-Islamic countries such as India or the United States. Evangelizing for Christianity is a capital crime in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and many other Islamic countries as well. In Afghanistan, even converting to Christianity is a capital crime.

Iraq is on the front page of every newspaper in the world every day.

Moreover, the Islamic countries have never accepted the1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, the nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference adopted in 1981 the "Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights," which is "subject to Islamic sharia." Thus the Islamic countries openly proclaim that their laws will never respect the individual human being's freedom of conscience.

It is therefore not surprising that contact between the Ummah and the United States has ultimately resulted in a clash of cultures. For the United States is founded on religious freedom and religious toleration if on nothing else.

From this heritage comes the great respect that we Americans accord to an individual's conscience, and to an individual's freedom to worship God as he or she understands that he or she must. Our Bill of Rights explicitly prevents Congress from enacting any law that would establish any particular religion as the official religion of the United States.

And Article 18 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is unambiguous:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The Islamists take advantage of the West's adherence to this doctrine in order to undermine this sacred "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and to replace it with the intolerant code of sharia, under which those who do not submit to Islam are judged infidels and deprived of either their lives or dignity. The freedom that the Islamists seek, is the freedom to deprive us of our

At the Dallas Morning News the other day, our editorial board received a delegation from the local Muslim community. They came in large part to complain about editorial coverage of the community, which is to say they came mostly to complain about me. Which is fine: they accurately recognize that don't believe their claims that they are completely innocent of radicalism, and are wholly victims of irrational fear of Muslims. Once again, I came away from a meeting with them even more convinced of my views in this regard. I recorded the entire meeting, and hope to have the time in the next week or so to post lengthy excerpts. In summation, though, the group was defensive, evasive, and wouldn't give a straight answer to simple questions.

I asked the delegation's leader to clarify something he'd said to me and some colleagues last time we met, about his belief that homosexuals should be killed, adulterous women stoned, etc. He launched an elaborate defense of this position, saying that Judaism and Christianity are against homosexuality. Yes, I said, but they don't require that gays be killed for being gay. Do you believe that they should? An imam jumped in to explain why the sharia is right to require hand-chopping of thieves. Later, the delegation's leader said that if I'm asking him to apologize for what his religion requires, he's not going to do it.

Trying to get at the heart of the matter, I asked if they thought sharia should be the law of the land in our secular pluralistic democracy. Another round of long-winded answers, amounting to, "It would never happen here." That's not what I'm asking, I said; should it happen here. Someone explained that Muslim community would never be big enough in this country to make that happen. Which is, of course, entirely beside the point, but we moved on. I had my answer.

Notice the thinking process by which the imam described above develops his arguments: when Dreher challenged him to respond if he thought gays should be executed, the imam counters by raising the ante to include the manual amputation of thieves. And then huffily refuses to apologize for "what his religion requires."

In 2003, after I'd only been in Dallas for a few months, we had a meeting with Dr. Sayyid Syeed, head of the Islamic Society of North America. Dr. Syeed was as pleasant as could be as long as we talked very generally about peace and cooperation. But when I asked him how he squared his professed belief in peace and tolerance with the indisputable fact that members of the ISNA board had been directly linked to extremist organizations and viewpoints, he became furious, shook his fist at me, told me that I would one day "repent," and said my questions reminded him of Nazi Germany.

It was a hysterical performance, and one that raised far more questions than it answered. I believe that many US Muslim leaders try to substitute "How dare you!" for a substantive response to serious and legitimate concerns, in hopes that those asking the questions will withdraw them out of shame. Sorry, but that doesn't work with me, and it ought not work with anybody who didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. In the meeting here the other day, when the topic of Sayyid Qutb's thought being part of a quiz competition at the big local mosque came up, Mohamed and some of the others tried to minimize Qutb's importance. You might have believed that if, like most Americans, you know nothing about Qutb. But anybody who knows anything about him understands his absolutely central role as the philosopher behind modern jihadism. To learn that Qutb's thought has been welcomed into a mosque does not put one's mind at ease. Here, for example, is Qutb on the possibility of building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, i.e., those living in Ignorance:

The only way to bridge the gulf between the two is for Ignorance to liquidate itself completely and substitute for all its laws, values, standards and concepts their Islamic counterparts. The first step that should be taken in this field by the person calling on people to embrace Islam is to segregate himself from Ignorance. He must be separated to the extent that any agreement or intercourse between him and Ignorance is absolutely impossible unless and until the people of Ignorance embrace Islam completely: no intermingling, no half measures or conciliation is permissible, however clever Ignorance may be in usurping the role of Islam or reflecting it. The chief basis of the personality of the person inviting others to Islam is the clear manifestation of this fact within himself and his solemn conviction of being radically different from them. They have their own religion, and he has his. His task is to orientate them so that they may follow his path without any fraud or pretence. Failing this, he must withdraw completely, detach himself from their life and openly declare to them: "You have your own religion, and I have mine." This is a sine qua non for the contemporary advocates of Islam.

Now, you simply cannot tell me that teaching the thought of a man who believed the only way to relate to non-Muslims is entirely on terms set by Muslims, who should intend ultimately to destroy non-Muslim beliefs and way of life and substitute Islam -- you can't tell me that exposing kids to this way of thinking in the biggest mosque in Texas is not something worthy of the larger community's concern. You can't dismiss him as a fringe figure, or dismiss his being taught here as nothing compared to all the good that the mosque does. You just can't, not credibly. We are seeing in England the poisonous fruits of the wider community having turned a blind eye to the spread of this poisonous ideology among the youth. We can't afford the same mistake here.

To ask these questions is not to show hatred for Muslims, and to assert such a thing is transparently an attempt at moral bullying. On the contrary, asking hard questions and expecting credible answers is to take Islam and its doctrines and believers seriously. And it is to take the journalists' role seriously. I mean it sincerely when I say that I welcome dialogue with our Muslim neighbors. Dialogue, not monologue. Mohamed seems to believe that dialogue is only possible if the outcome is predetermined, and it can only be agreement with his side's views. I respectfully but firmly dissent.

It would appear from Tariq Ramadan's blithe taqiyya and from the forthright explanations of the leaders of the Dallas Muslim community, that even moderate Muslims, as Dreher puts it, believe that the only way to relate to non-Muslims is entirely on terms set by Muslims, and intend ultimately to destroy our non-Muslim beliefs and way of life, for which they intend to substitute Islam.

That is what they expect us passively to tolerate. As Patrick Henry said, "Forbid it, Almighty God!"